The 12% GST on sanitary pads and tampons has become a red rag to women’s rights activists and opposition parties. The government’s logic for the high GST is that raw materials like polymers have an 18% tax rate, so lowering tax on the finished product would hurt producers. But that has not convinced those campaigning to lower the tax, who see it as a compromise on a public health matter. They see this as a general social disregard for women’s health, comfort and mobility. The personal is absolutely political, as they see it.

Indian women desperately need affordable menstrual solutions, but many don’t even know they need it. A 2010 Nielsen study found that only 12% of Indian women used sanitary pads; a more recent National Family Health Survey said roughly 58% use hygienic methods. An appallingly large number of women rely on unsterilised rags, husk, ash, leaves and so on – which puts them at risk of infection. Schoolgirls miss class on those days of the month. Menstrual restrictions, in other words, mean that women’s lives and opportunities are systematically curbed.

There are valid environmental worries about polymer-based menstrual hygiene products – the wood pulp requires large-scale deforestation, it creates staggering volumes of plastic waste, the polymers take 500 years to decompose. Science and policy should be directed towards expanding eco-friendly solutions. But a tax that makes all menstrual products more inaccessible is a step in the wrong direction. Period.